Blood Ties
by Beckles1987
Summary: One shot POV. Post Girl in Question, Angel thinks about Buffy or more specifcally his blood tie to her. General spoilers for all Buffy and Angel


**A/N This had been floating around in the back of my head for a couple of months before I decided to let it out and it's been sitting in my hard drive even longer. I've read a few fics with Angel and Buffy having some kind of lingering side effects of their relationship and this is my take on it.**

**Reviews are always welcome and if you can't say anything constructive flame away, but karma is a b and so am I... and I'll just delete them anyway so you're only flaming yourself. If you understood any of that last sentance I salute you.**

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It called to him, now more than ever before. Even more so than after he had had her in his arms and been able to love her as he had dreamt of for a whole day, now he could smell her scent on his clothes and now she had left him with 'sometimes'. 

The slayer's blood called to him.

It had always whispered darkly to him. The first time he ever spoke to her he knew that she was special. She had such a spirited way about her, she knew hell existed and was more than prepared to give it some hell of her own making. He had always known that her blood would be powerful, because she was the slayer, that her adrenaline would make it strong. He didn't anticipate her endorphins making it the sweetest he had ever tasted. It had burned as her power had coursed through him, healing him. It had burned him like it was liquid sunshine and he wanted it all.

If he closed his eyes and allowed everything else to drop away he could hear her heartbeat, slow and steady if she was relaxed, getting quicker as she trained and patrolled… not that it stayed quick for long. She was in the greatest shape of any slayer he'd ever known so her heartbeat went back to normal at record speed.

Then it stopped

For over a hundred and forty days it had stopped. She died. He assumed he couldn't hear it in Pylea because it was another dimension, because he was so distracted, because he didn't really believe he was hearing her heartbeat, just imagining it. When he returned to the hotel and saw her best friend sitting there he knew. His heart had stopped beating centuries earlier but it died on that day, when he found out that she was lost to him forever.

He thought he was going crazy.

He must have been, hearing her heart after all that time, the long months since her death. He waited a day or two and rang. It was her voice, clearly disoriented, not quite back to being herself but he could talk to her, see her… gods he needed to see her, touch her hands, her face, hold her in his arms until all the pain went away.

The pain didn't go away.

He saw her. They spoke. They talked like strangers, distant acquaintances who happened to meet on a bus. Not lovers, not friends, not two people who had once loved each other so deeply that when he lay dying, she offered herself up and he refused, he had to be beaten into hurting her. There was a distance between them, more than the distance between their cities, more than the words that were never said. Something dark had somehow got inside and she was suffocating slowly, her soul was trapped inside her body and it was dying. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. He had not got the right to make her listen to him, take her back with him and nurse her better. Rationally he knew that he had no claim on her, whatever the scar on her neck might have led others to believe, she was no more still his girl than she was Riley's.

It stopped again.

Only for a second or two, barely even time to be noticed, but he knew, he knew that she'd had another brush with death that afternoon. It had been beating erratically for some minutes. It had made him pissy. Hell it had made him scared. He knew who had saved her, the same person who had saved her from him, restoring his soul at the last minute.

She was halfway around the world, she had another lover, but that didn't stop it. It didn't stop the comforting rhythm of her sleeping heartbeat being his lullaby or the dreams that wouldn't leave him alone. He could act like his heart and soul had moved on and maybe they had but his body, his inner demon, definitely hadn't. The nectar that she'd made him drink from her, running down his throat and imbuing him with a power he didn't know existed. He hadn't had dreams that affected him like this since he was alive… and fourteen years old.

It called to him.

Buffy's blood called to him.


End file.
